The monkey boy has something to say. Walter hands
him a banana and listens intently. Sebastian knows just
a few English words: friend, cookie, popcorn, and a
handful of others. The elephants still need to be fed
and a few tents are waiting to be erected, but Walter
decides he has a few minutes to kill.

Sebastian smiles underneath all that mangy fur
and says, "Water. Friend. Water friend."

The monkey boy has been saying that for the
past week or so now, since before the carnival left
Rockford. Walter laughs to himself, finally realizing the
truth. Sebastian is trying to say, Walter. Friend. They
smile at each other.

II

Kurt and Kraig are the twins. Their faces are identical
and they share three arms and two legs. Kurt is the
entertainer, regaling the carnies with impressions of Al
Jolson and Groucho Marx. Kraig is the intellectual,
barely speaking, nose perpetually buried in some
obscure book. On stage, Kurt sings "Hallelujah,
I'm a Bum" while Kraig reads a newspaper and
pretends not to be an exhibit.

III

The carnival will be open soon. Fathers and mothers
chase their unruly, screaming children outside the
gates. The scent, of fresh, salty peanuts, stains the air.

IV

Nigel wants to take the tickets, but the man in the long
red coat never lets him.

"Why?" asks the diminutive
Englishman, posh and proud. "Is it because I'm
different, Squire? A cat is a lot more different, my dear
Sir, but the good people love a cat!"

Nigel is fond of saying this. The man in the long
red coat is firm, unyielding. Nigel raises all thirty-nine
inches of himself off the ground, propping himself up
onto a bench, and fixes the boss with a malignant stare.
Yet there is nothing else he can do but rehearse his act
for the sideshow. And this he will do with dignity; he is,
after all, a professional performer.

V

The girls practice their own act in a deserted field far
away from the carnival site. They have no delusions
about their status in the eyes of the man in the long red
coat. To him, their sole purpose in life is to be a
decoration, a window dressing to attract the public. One
tall (Helen, standing at seven-feet, five), one small (Dot,
standing at two-feet, ten), both as mysterious as they
are beautiful. Helens voice threatens to give out at one
point as she struggles to hit the high notes, but Dot
winks to coax her along. They've gone over this song
for three hours straight. Dot in particular is very proud.
She wrote it herself three weeks ago, just prior to
joining the carnival and teaming up with Helen. They
make it to the end of the song. Dot mentions that
maybe they should skip the show and take it on the
road themselves. Helen giggles.

VI

Nigel paces. He is outraged to have been spoken to in
this manner. The man in the long red coat will not get
away with this.

Sebastian, the monkey boy, pokes his head into
Nigel's tent and says, "Friend. Itty cookie
friend."

Nigel grins wearily, handing Sebastian a ginger
snap.

"Friend," Sebastian repeats.

The show will start in ten minutes.

VII

They call her Zim. She cannot remember when she
joined the carnival, or where she came from. All she
knows is that there was a quaint, funny little boy long
ago, and that he used to imitate her high-pitched voice.
He ran around laughing. She fell to the ground, crying
softly. Overhead, the apples on the tree danced,
superimposed on cloudless sky. She could not
perceive color. The laughing boy did not know that.
There was also a large, terminally sad woman who
used to feed her strawberries. That is all she can
remember today. She ended up at the carnival. The
ringmaster reminds her of the dancing apples. The
other people are nice. They call her Zim.

VIII

KAVANAGHS TRAVELING SIDESHOW!

ONE WEEK ONLY!

HERE IN YOUR VERY OWN TOWN!

FEAST YOUR EYES ON THE MISSING LINK, THE
SIAMESE TWINS, THE HUMAN SKELETON, AND
MANY, MANY MORE!

LISTEN TO THE HARMONY OF A GIANTESS AND A
DWARF!

PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR SENSES EXPANDED BY
THESE FREAKS OF NATURE!

FAINT OF HEART BE FOREWARNED!

IX

Everyone is in place except the monkey boy. The
pressure is on. Sebastian is the opening act. The man
in the long red coat will not wait long. Nigel has been
with the sideshow longer than most, and he has seen
the ringmaster punish other sideshow performers by
leaving them behind when the carnival moves on. The
monkey boy will never survive on his own. Nigel has to
find him.

"Bloody hell," he mutters.

X

Sebastian hides in a ditch about a block from the
carnival. He imagines that nobody can see him. He is
invisible. He thinks of Walter, his friend. Sometimes he
likes to think of Walter as his father, back to pick him
up the way he dropped him off. He closes his eyes.
Pictures his mother the day he was born. He knows she
screamed, but he imagines she smiled. He imagines. In
his minds eye the world is a place of tranquility, of
thousands of people living in the mountains who look
just like him. He is always imagining something. A few
minutes tick by. The itty cookie friend walks by his
hiding place, searching for something. Sebastian runs
to him. Follows him. The itty cookie friend is irascible,
but his eyes are kind. Sebastian has to pee.

XI

"Faint of heart be forewarned." Kavanagh's
favorite phrase, and he uses it often.

The customers are hungry, eager to be
frightened. Kavanagh feeds on their eagerness. The
world is filled with spectators. Nobody wants to stick an
arm down the lion's throat, but a lot of people will sit
back and watch from a safe distance.

Kavanagh merely gives them what they want.

He stands before the crowd, crimson jacket
draped over shoulders, an elegant smile playing over
his lips. "Ladies and gentlemen, my humble
congratulations," he says in a deep, authoritative
voice. "You should be placed a cut above the
common folk, who simply walk past this tent without
stopping. They are afraid to see the monsters; you are
not. They refuse to spy on the deformed, the
incomplete, the missing links of our society. But you,
my friends, have not refused."

Coughs, clearing throats. Discomfort.

Full attention.

"I found Sebastian during a hunting
expedition to the dark jungles of Africa,"
Kavanagh continues. "When I discovered the
poor boy he was three years old, scavenging for scraps
of food in a hostile environment. I followed him to his
village, where I met his dying mother, Matilda. Matilda
told me about her rare incurable virus, and about the
violent rape that resulted in the birth of young
Sebastian. She had been molested by a crazed gorilla;
yet the decidedly interracial coupling had produced the
sweetest child that woman had ever seen. She asked
me to bring him with me when I returned to the States,
and this I have done."

Every word captivating, and not a single one
based in fact. But Kavanagh knows that people don't
really want to hear the truth. What they want to hear are
lies made to sound true.

Kavanagh is an accomplished liar.

"Faint of heart be forewarned, for you are
about to behold the most amiable half-breed human
gorilla the world has ever seen. Meet Sebastian."

He gestures offstage for the monkey boy to join
him.

XII

Sebastian follows Nigel back to the tent, but only
because Nigel promised to tell the boy a story after the
show. Nigel tells lots of good stories. In one of his
stories all the freaks seize control of the carnival and
make the man in the long red coat stand onstage to be
gawked at by hundreds of people. He plans to write his
stories down someday and sell them. Ink pens are big
and awkward in his little hands; he gets frustrated
easily. It could be a lot worse, he tells himself. He could
have no hands at all.

XIII

All of the monkey boy's friends are here. Itty cookie
friend smiles at him, pushes him gently toward the
stage. Kurt snatches the newspaper from his brother
Kraig's hands so he won't be distracted while Sebastian
performs. Helen lifts Dot up so she can see around
Waldo, the fat man. Zim watches Sebastian with huge,
bulging blue eyes while she practices her palm-reading
act on Walter. Everyone is here to support Sebastian,
and they'll be able to see him dance as soon as he
finds a place to pee.

The man in the long red coat chuckles onstage,
but his eyes are not cheerful. He turns and stares at
Sebastian, glares at him. "Get your flea-infested
ass out here," he stage-whispers.

The monkey boy steps out to see the crowd.
Someone in the back, a man with a walrus moustache,
says, "Dear Lord, do you see that thing? It's
hideous!" Another voice retorts, "Yeah, but I
bet it'd go for a mint and a half at one of them science
laboratories."

The red coat man shakes his head, squinting
into the audience. "I'm sorry, but I must put an
end to such notions here and now. None of the exhibits
are for sale. It would destroy them to be exploited in that
sort of manner."

Sebastian's legs bounce up and down. Walter
says from backstage, "Never mind them,
Sebastian. Just do the dance."

Water friend. Water friend likes to feed him
bananas and tell him he's a good person. But the good
people love a cat. A cat. A lot more different. But the
good people. The monkey boy stares at a tiny ketchup
stain on the sleeve of an elderly woman in the front row.
He can't move. He can't remember what it is he's
supposed to do exactly. The world blends in and out of
existence as his legs continue to bounce. They're all
waiting for him, the crowd, his friends, the man in the
long red coat. Maybe he should say something.

"Us not cats," he says, and the locks
on his bladder break and his crotch and pant legs and
the floor beneath him are covered in urine. His pants
are wet and sticky and hot, so he takes them off. The
front-row elderly woman faints, cracking her head on
the concrete floor. Another woman screams. People
begin to complain about the rising smell of piss in the
carnival tent. The man in the long red coat rushes him,
swears, grabs him by both arms, and the act is over.

XIV

They call her Zim. She remembers very little about the
show today, but she does know her palm-reading was a
hit. The people were happy because the old woman got
up from the floor on her own and didn't cry and didn't
die. The people's palms said happy things, and so Zim
said happy things too. She bowed to the people when
she was done. The ringmaster told the people she was
a pinhead. He smells like apples after they've been on
a shelf in the garage for about a year. The other people
call her Zim. They say her eyes are a beautiful, deep
blue. She doesn't know what blue is. She told one man
he would make a lot of money. He laughed out loud
and then winked at her. That's all she can remember
right now.